Central Ohio as Energy Hub
Central Ohio has been designated by the state as the energy hub to manufacture and store energy. It is called the Central Ohio Hub for Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Energy Storage.
This program of designating a total of 7 hubs is designed to take advantage of the area's resources in order to subsequently attract clusters of businesses, new investments, and skilled workers, which will translate to a more vibrant economy by creating jobs and developing new, hopefully, cleaner industries.
Ohio's seven hubs and their specialties are: Akron--bio-materials commercialization, Cincinnati--consumer marketing, Cleveland--health and technology, Columbus--energy ,manufacturing and storage, Dayton--aerospace, Toledo--solar energy, Youngstown--advanced materials and software development.
Where will the quarter of a million dollars of grant money come from? The Ohio Department of Development's contingency fund.
TechColumbus will act as lead organization for the central Ohio hub.
This system of hubs for energy came about because of an obvious need. There are 18 labs devoted to energy storage research, but there were zero devoted to energy manufacturing.
With the launch of this project, those involved in the business of making, transmitting, selling, and storing power in central Ohio are moving toward a higher level of energy efficiency as well as independence.
All this is significant if we want to see a transition, sooner than later, to clean-energy technology. As Joe Hamrock, president of American Electric Power admits about the hub design: "This accelerates something already going on."
AEP is working with Batelle, a Columbus-based research company, on battery technology for use with electric grids that will be designed to accommodate electric vehicles.
The bigger implication here is that the business and technology collaboration focuses on packaging and manufacturing here in the U.S. in diverse economic activities, bringing about economic stability, even as it reduces our dependence on foreign oil or domestic coal as the leading sources of energy.
Hopefully, other cities and other states would follow suit and create their own system of hubs to enhance economic activity even as they grow more sensitive to the needs of people and the environment.
Follow Technorati